Patrol

Clinton Campaigns in New York Calling for Police Reform

April 4, 2016

Hillary Clinton spent her Sunday in New York campaigning in front of black congregations during which she continued to reiterate her support for retraining police officers.

Clinton has made “police reform” a recurring theme in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She was endorsed Sunday by Nicole Bell, wife of Sean Bell, a man who was killed by the NYPD in 2005. No officers were found guilty of any wrongdoing in the incident.

“Today, I was endorsed by this beautiful young woman, Nicole Bell, whose fiancé was killed by the police right before she was to be married. When I was a Senator, I tried to help. I tried to stand up about what had happened,” the former secretary of state said at the Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, NY.

In an interview with The New York Daily News she said, “[Hillary’s] against racial profiling. And she wants to make investments to improve training for police officers. Those issues hit home for me and my family.”

Hillary repeated these comments almost verbatim at her church visit saying, “We have to end racial profiling and we have to retrain our police officers so they can do a job that doesn’t require reaching for their gun when it is absolutely unnecessary.”

On Clinton’s website she describes the sort of reforms she wants to enact on policing, all of which require federal government involvement at the local level. The solutions she prescribes are rather vague, the Daily Caller reports.

“Hillary will make new investments to ensure law enforcement officials are properly trained on issues like implicit bias, conflict resolution, and use of force so they’re equipped to protect their own safety and the safety of others,” it says on her campaign site.

The chief of the Nashville Metro Police Department took to Twitter late last week to plead for citizens to thank a police officer, appreciate the difficulty of their jobs, and understand that despite being fewer in numbers officers are being asked to do more and more every day.

The Florida Highway Patrol Training Academy posted on Facebook, "It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Master Sergeant Daniel Hinton. Master Sergeant Hinton suffered cardiac arrest during a training exercise and was transported to Gulf Coast Hospital where he later passed away."